Saturday, February 2, 2008

Discrimination works for no one

Slate has a great article detailing the all around negativity of ethnic and gender discrimination in business. The article accurately points out that discrimination not only harms those who are being discriminated against, but the business itself as well:

But discrimination should also show up in another way. Employers who prefer not to employ workers because of their sex or the color of their skin are likely to lose money: Employing stupid white men when you could be employing smart black women is not a profitable human-resources policy. Employers might nevertheless do this, either because they do not realize that their prejudices are costing them money, or because they do not care. If so, discrimination is easy to detect in principle: Just note that the profitable firms will be the ones employing more women or workers from an ethnic minority.